Re: Romberg is the Starting C

Rams head coach Scott Linehan announced today that Brett Romberg will be the team's starting center for the 2007 season.

Romberg battled incumbent center Andy McCollum throughout the 2007 training camp and preseason for the starting spot. Romberg was the starter for the Rams preseason opener at Minnesota and also got the starting nod last week at Oakland. McCollum started at center in the Rams first preseason home game against San Diego.

McCollum, who has been a staple at the center position for the Rams, suffered a season-ending knee injury in the 2006 home opener against Denver. Romberg stepped in playing in 10 games and starting three in 2006 and was part of an offensive line that blocked for running back Steven Jackson on the way to his first Pro Bowl.

Prior to signing with the Rams in 2006, Romberg spent time bouncing between the active roster and practice squad in Jacksonville. He played collegiately at the University of Miami, and was the recipient of the Dave Rimington Award, given to the nation's top center.

Re: Romberg is the Starting C

As Rams fans with an eye toward the long term, I think we have to be in Romberg's corner. While McCollum was a very good player in his time, if he won the starting job, he'd hold it for a year, two at best. Romberg can potentially hold the position for next several years, forming a young core with Incognito, Barron and Setterstrom.

Re: Romberg is the Starting C

Congrats to B. Romberg, but I'd like to know what is going to happen to Dustin Fry now. Granted McCollum can give us a quality back up for maybe one year; but what then? And, I also believe that Fry is really more of the type of player (Big, nasty and physical) that Linehan is looking for. I say we gotta keep Fry: I keep getting bad vibes that if we cut him some other team will pick him up and we'll regret it for a long time to come.

Re: Romberg is the Starting C

Re: Romberg is the Starting C

is there any chance andy m. gets cut, linehan said it was week to week and of course we know that won't work you have to let these get play together, you can't have a guy always looking over his shoulder if he makes a mistake or two. he knows Andy is there. can we keep both andy and fry ?

Re: Romberg is the Starting C

Romberg Wins Out, Named Starting Center
Monday, August 27, 2007

By Nick Wagoner
Senior Writer

As recently as last week, Brett Romberg believed he had a pretty good idea whom the starting center for the Rams would be in 2007. If Romberg had been forced to bet on it, he would have chosen veteran Andy McCollum.

Monday afternoon, coach Scott Linehan sat Romberg and McCollum down in separate meetings and gave them the final verdict on the only true position battle among the starters in this preseason.

“We have decided to name Brett Romberg our starting center for the opener,” Linehan said. “Andy will be the backup and will be available to play at any time. Once you decide that, you kind of go with it. Andy is very, very capable. He has done it for many years and it was a very tough decision.”

Romberg couldn’t have been happier to be wrong about a situation he thought he had a better read on for the duration of training camp and the preseason. In the preseason opener against Minnesota, Romberg flipped through the pages of the game program and saw McCollum listed as the starter even though he was told he would be starting against the Vikings.

Even when Romberg ran out during player introductions, the Minnesota public address announcer called McCollum’s name.

“For a long time I actually thought he was going to be the guy,” Romberg said. “Everyone kept coming up to me saying, ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’ Obviously I wasn’t talking to anyone. I was just going out to work and doing my thing.”

For Romberg, the voyage from practice squad fodder to starting NFL center has been a wild one. After earning nearly every accolade a college center can get at the University of Miami, Romberg went undrafted because he was deemed too small to play at the NFL level.

“It’s a dream come true,” Romberg said. “I’ve worked very, very hard and it has been a long, long, tough road, especially coming from Miami, doing what I did at Miami and battling and battling. Pretty much staying tough mentally was probably the toughest thing. I’m excited and happy.”

In 2003, Jacksonville signed Romberg as an undrafted free agent. He fell short of making the roster, but was signed to the practice squad. Two months later, he was signed to the active roster.

Romberg stayed on the 53-man roster through the 2004 season as he dressed for six games and was active for 10. But Romberg was relegated back to the practice squad for 12 weeks of the 2005 season before spending the final four weeks on the roster as an inactive.

Heading into 2006, it appeared Romberg was destined for another season of practice squad appearances. Just as Romberg began to let the disappointment of the direction of his football career seep through, he got a reprieve from St. Louis.

With his wife Emily constantly reminding him of the type of player he could be, the Rams signed Romberg away from Jacksonville’s practice squad on Sept. 12, 2006.

“That was probably the hardest thing for me to come about because I went to Jacksonville and was going against Marcus Stroud and John Henderson and some of the biggest cats in the league and I was definitely exploited, for my size,” Romberg said. “I was like, ‘Man, is this the size of the guys in the league?’ Then I watched guys I played against in college on Sunday doing well in football games, I was like, ‘I’ve played against these guys, I’ve done really well against these guys. How come I can’t go in there and play?’ After a while, after second guessing myself a lot, I just said, ‘You know what, forget it, that’s it, I’m playing.’"

Romberg played in 10 games for the Rams last season, mostly on special teams until Week 15 against Oakland. On that day, Romberg made his first NFL start. He played well enough in that game to earn two more starts to close the season.

It was no coincidence that the Rams’ running game took off with Romberg in the lineup. And though he didn’t solidify the job with the way he finished the 2006 season, he made a strong case for why he should be the starter this year.

Romberg attacked the offseason with the same vigor and hunger he showed at the end of last season, pushing his weight up closer to 300 pounds and making a concerted effort to get stronger.

After starting that game against the Vikings and playing through pain against Oakland, Romberg had done enough in Linehan’s eyes to earn the job.

“We were trying to keep the continuity of what we were doing at the end of the year that was part of it,” Linehan said. “Some of it is (that Romberg is) a younger player, but I don’t think it was (that big). We are going to put the best five out there. We just feel Romberg is one of the best five right now based on how he played. That he’s younger or older isn’t as big a factor as you would think. I think it was close. It wasn’t a no brainer.”

As for McCollum, the news was difficult to take considering what a key part of the offense and the locker room he has been in his nine seasons with the Rams. Since arriving in St. Louis as a free agent on April 19, 1999, McCollum started over 90 games at guard or center.

The old sports cliché says that a player shall never lose his job to injury, but when McCollum suffered a season-ending knee injury against Denver last season, it opened the door for a younger player to make an impression. Romberg was that player.

McCollum handled the training camp competition with his usual grace and class, offering pointers to Romberg and keeping the competition as friendly as possible. Even when he spoke with Linehan on Monday morning, McCollum took the news as well as could be expected.

“I was proud of how he came back,” Linehan said. “He’s disappointed, he feels like he wants to be in that position. He didn’t really say a whole lot, but I didn’t expect him to. I know he’s going to work very very hard to get back out there. I think guys like him are motivated by that but they are also very professional along the way.”

McCollum also wasted no time in congratulating Romberg and offering more help to the young center as he develops.

For now, Linehan said McCollum will remain the backup to Romberg and also be available to fill in at guard should the need arise. And, of course, Romberg isn’t completely out of the woods yet.

While Linehan said he won’t have a quick trigger if Romberg struggles, he did say his new starting center will be constantly evaluated just like every other starter.

“It would have been a whole different story if I came in this year and they said I was the starting guy and that would have been it,” Romberg said. “Obviously, the competition that they keep creating throughout training camp and the fact that it was stated that I need to keep working in order to keep my job – it’s going to be a constant fight. Every week, no matter what week it is in the year, I’m going to look at it the same way, like I could lose my job tomorrow."

Re: Romberg is the Starting C

This is great news! Im a huge Romberg fan and I have been rooting for him since the strong finish of last season. McCollum is a great center in his own right, but age definitely plays a huge factor. Here's to the future, Romberg and Fry!